Zombi 2 (1979)

This is an historical moment, ladies and gentlemen. The first thing is that I'm writing about "Zombi 2" and not "Zombie Flesh Eaters". I prefer the second title, but I'm getting older and lazy and started to use the controversial "Zombi 2"-title. If someone is getting upset about that, just fuck off ;)

The second historical moment is this: I don't see any problems with the traffic in the final scenes. Really. There's no problem at all. I don't see it as "revealing mistake" or something else silly that IMDB would have called it. There's a zombie-invasion in New York. You have a bridge. Because of all the traffic there's not chance to drive faster. No way in hell. It would be more realistic to drive slower actually. You see a lot of traffic in the scene, and they are going back and forth from Manhattan - probably not just to save themselves, but to find relatives, do some random raids for free teves and so on. So now I said it. And I'm proud of not being one of those "Oh, look at the calm and non-zombie-related traffic at the bridge!"-type of people. At least I've been on the exact same place at the zombies, which a lot of other fans hasn't. Haha.

Dread. That's the word for Zombi 2. I've never seen a movie (maybe The New York Ripper) that has such a feeling of dread and despair. Everything is dirty, slimy, unhealthy, gory, black, disgusting and just revolting. The gore is extremly graphic and detailed, and also very well made. You know, from the beginning, that it will go to hell with everything. Everytime the story cuts to doctor Maynard at the island you know there's some nasty shit going on. When people die in his hospital it's not nice. It's terrible, and headache-inducing. The illness almost spreads out from the dvd and infects the whole viewing-experience. But don't get me wrong, this is a great movie. Probably one of the best zombie-movies ever made. Fulci was a master of details, and there's nothing in this movie that hasn't that Fulci-feeling (well, maybe one thing - and that's historical moment nr 3... more to that later). Just forget about the gory make-up effects for a while and check out the sets. Wonderful and loaded with details, interesting props and a whole story of it's own. Fulci clearly knew what he wanted.

People also, sometimes, complains about the corny dialogue. Might be true, but it's not that much that people seems to think. The two cops in the beginning has a few cheesy lines, but for me that's all that is. The rest of the actors does a very fine job. There wouldn't be a Zombi 2 without Tisa Farrow (has anyone tried to contact her by the way?), Ian McCulloch, Richard Johnson, Al Cliver, Auretta Gay, Olga Karlatos and of course Dakar. Richard Johnson does a very fine job, probably better than most actors of his stature would have done in a similar situation.

So, now on to historical moment part 3: The shark-scene sucks. Yeah, it's true. Sorry. It's not a boring scene, but it belongs in another movie. Like Zombi 3 or 4. It's just to silly to be in Zombi 2! The underwater-footage looks great, the shark is neat and the not water-proof zombie-make up stinks. It's just something that stops the movie in the middle. The movie has a flow, an atmosphere of doom... and then they throw in an underwater-zombie that attacks a shark... plus a couple of breast-shots. I sit through that scene everytime because I don't believe in fastforward a movie... but it's getting closer and closer everytime!

And yes, here I am on top of the bridge. A little slimmer though, but proud as hell.